This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

When a roof collapses on a house, that's one thing, but when House goes through the roof, something curious is happening in Canada.

The Hugh Laurie medical drama returned for a sixth season Sept. 21 and drew an astounding 4.4 million viewers on Global, double the series' average audience last season and by far the highest rating in its history.

That's more people than were counted watching the Super Bowl, Grey Cup or American Idol finale in Canada last season. The two-hour premiere was a pretty good episode, but that good?

What jacked up House was the brand new way those viewers were counted. As of Aug. 31, the national ratings gathering service BBM Canada rolled its new Portable People Meter data right across the country.

Piloted for five years in and around Montreal, the new, improved way of gathering TV and radio ratings has energized a battered Canadian TV industry desperate for a little good news.

Article Continued Below

While ratings for Canadian broadcasters seemed to be trending down the last few seasons, overnight they are higher than ever. The second episode of House drew 3.5 million. Survivor returned to 3.1 million. Grey's Anatomy stormed back to more than 3 million.

Even Canadian specialty networks, such as Space and Teletoon, have seen record ratings for season premieres of shows like Stargate Universe and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

"Overall, I think it's a great story for television," says Kathy Gardner, senior vice-president, strategic insight at Global's parent company Canwest.

"We're capturing viewers we weren't capturing before. They were always there, we just couldn't grab them."

Why all of this matters is that higher audience levels generally lead to higher ad rates, welcome news for broadcasters suffering through one of the worst ad slumps ever.

BBM Canada president and CEO Jim MacLeod says the new PPM data is finding viewers "we were blind to before." Part of the reason is that the new PPM receptor – a pager-sized device weighing just 75 grams – follows people wherever they are watching TV, including the homes of friends, neighbours, or even into restaurants and bars. This is adding, in general, about 12 per cent more viewers to the total audience picture, says MacLeod.

That doesn't explain all the gains, however. Overall TV ratings are up at least 20 per cent so far this fall. Other factors include a bigger survey panel (4,350 homes, up about a thousand and including around 9,000 individuals), more strategic neighbourhood placement (including a higher emphasis on Canadian cities like Calgary where population growth is more rapid and shifting) and, probably the most important factor, ease of use.

The new PPM ratings are not captured with the aid of a set-top box or anything hooked up to a TV set or VCR. Instead, there is an encoder in each and every radio and television transmission facility in Canada. It emits a code every four seconds into the station's audio signal. You can't hear it, says MacLeod, but it is there.

What does hear it is the PPM pocket device carried by every member of the family.

It is those family numbers who have likely boosted House this fall. Gardner suggests that show benefits from its 8 p.m. time slot, an hour when parents and adult children are ready and present.

Under the old People Meter system, each household had a hand set with every family member's name on the buttons. When you were in front of the TV, you were supposed to log in.

Not everybody did all the time, says MacLeod.

PPMs aren't perfect, however. Gardner says her staff have noticed a downturn in late night viewing that could have something to do with how the PPMs are stored and recharged at night. That's when the device is stationed in a dock located in a bedroom or somewhere away from TV screens.

There, the data recorded during the day is downloaded to BBM Canada while the device is recharged.

Viewers in the habit of catching The Tonight Show or The Daily Show from bed at night may have already docked their PPMs for the evening.

If the PPMs do not detect any motion from being worn or carried, they automatically shut down after 20 minutes.

There has been an impact on nightly newscasts, too. While CTV and Global's national newscasts are up – with the surprise being the boost in younger viewers – CBC's flagship newscast The National is down this fall.

One other variable is that all programming has to be heard to be recorded by PPMs. Some newscasts, especially all-news services such as CP24, are often on in doctors' waiting rooms and other public places where the sound is off and on-screen captioning is on. Those airings are left out of the new sample.

Even hockey games or other sporting events in bars are only counted if they can be heard, although that hasn't hurt Hockey Night in Canada, which opened the season with more than 2.5 million viewers – over twice last year's average – for a Toronto-Montreal tilt at the start of the month.

Delivered dailyThe Morning Headlines Newsletter

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com